Rage Grips 2 Cities As Bundy Gets Stay

July 6, 1986|By Donna O'Neal of The Sentinel Staff

TALLAHASSEE — For many residents in Tallahassee and Lake City, the July Fourth weekend has been nothing to celebrate.

For them, last week's scheduled execution of Ted Bundy would have marked their day of independence -- freedom from eight years of rage at the stranger who snuffed out three lives and the neighborly ideal of unlocked doors and unfettered trust.

But a federal appeals court again has thwarted their death wish. On Wednesday, the day Bundy, 39, was to die in Florida's electric chair for the murders of two Florida State University sorority sisters, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta granted him an indefinite stay.

The decision gives Bundy's attorneys another chance to appeal his death sentences for the two Tallahassee slayings in January 1978 and the murder of a 12-year-old Lake City girl three weeks later. But the stay has left residents in both cities livid.

''I'm just sick. Disgusted,'' said Pat Guerry, a Lake City nurse who sent a 5,600-signature petition to Gov. Bob Graham calling for Bundy's execution after he successfully delayed his first one, set for March 4. ''We're saying up here if you want justice you have to take it into your own hands.''

In Tallahassee the stay also shocked many longtime residents, such as 83- year-old Gussie Russell.

''They put it off indefinitely!'' exclaimed Russell, who lives across from the Dunwoody Street duplex where Bundy attacked another FSU student after leaving the sorority house. ''I wish I could pull the switch. He ought to have been killed months or years ago.''

Eight years have passed since Bundy's 3 a.m. rampage through the Chi Omega sorority house and the duplex left two women dead, three others beaten and a city and campus reeling in shock, disbelief and fear.

But time hasn't erased the horror of the murders of Lisa Levy, 20, and Margaret Bowman, 21. The chill of the crime persists, even on a campus where many students have only grade-school memories or handed-down versions of the slayings on Jan. 15, 1978.

''I get the creeps every time I walk by that house,'' said Tammie Harter, 21, an FSU student who has friends in the sorority. ''They still get real upset about it. They just want to put it behind them.''

For many on campus and in the community, constant media attention to the case -- including a television drama on the handsome, former law student accused of murdering dozens of young women -- has only sharpened memories and resentment of the publicity.

''Ted Bundy's had enough press,'' said Leon County Sheriff Eddie Boone, who was an investigator with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement at the time of the murders. ''I'm tired of reading stories about Ted Bundy and seeing movies. Due process has prevailed. When is justice going to be a reality?''

Some, like Tallahassee resident and sorority national president Kirk Belle Cocke, label the coverage offensive, a ''pornography of grief.''

''When we went to the funerals of those two girls, we were constantly dodging the cameras and TV,'' said Cocke.

For most, however, there is the wearied resignation that even if Bundy some day dies in Florida's electric chair, even if the publicity fades, the murders have left imprints on Tallahassee.

Some are obvious, like the emergency telephones to campus police that now are scattered around the hilly, wooded campus of 22,000 students. Others require closer inspection, like the high-security alarm system on doors and windows of the two-story Chi Omega house and the floodlights peeking from under its roof. Many students said it is the most secure sorority house around campus.

''It's like Fort Knox,'' said Ron Stowers, 26, a fraternity member. ''The place is wired to the hilt.''

PART OF TOWN DIED TOO

Eight years ago, Bundy, carrying a branch, managed to slip unnoticed inside the house through an unlocked door and climb stairs to the rooms where Bowman, Levy and roommates Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner slept.

Minutes later he ran downstairs, past a startled sorority sister returning from a date, and out the front door. Bowman was dead, her skull crushed by repeated blows, her body sexually molested. Levy was dying from similar wounds; Chandler and Kleiner were beaten.

Even as campus and city police scrambled to sort through the grisly crime scene, a man struck, six blocks away on Dunwoody Street in a tiny duplex where dance student Cheryl Thomas was sleeping.

Her two next-door neighbors, also students, heard muffled sounds of a struggle and phoned their friend. The call spooked the intruder and saved Thomas' life. She had been beaten with a board.

The attacks stunned Tallahassee, said Ken Katsaris, then Leon County sheriff and now a national law enforcement consultant with offices in Tallahassee. ''This was one of those situations where those girls were in the right place at the right time, and they still were murdered.''